


O Souffle du Printemps

by Donna_Immaculata, ElDiablito_SF



Series: The Fabulous Adventures in Immortality of the Vampire Aramis and the Man Who Named the Mountain, Volume II [2]
Category: DUMAS Alexandre - Works, Les Trois Mousquetaires | The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas, d'Artagnan Romances (Three Musketeers Series) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Greek Mythology, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Blasphemy, Canon-Typical Violence, Heartbreak, M/M, Metafiction, Poetry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-31
Updated: 2015-07-31
Packaged: 2018-04-12 03:59:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4464626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Donna_Immaculata/pseuds/Donna_Immaculata, https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElDiablito_SF/pseuds/ElDiablito_SF
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Athos is finally returned by the sea and awakens to a changed world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	O Souffle du Printemps

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Favourite_alias](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Favourite_alias/gifts).



> This is so wedding-appropriate! Um, happy wedding! May the gods and especially Hera bless your union! Also: Ave Jesus!

**The Awakening**

 

The first memory that I recall was the absence of Sun. It was not night, yet above my head a misty layer covered the sky in a murky gloom. The air felt gray and wet, as if I had woken in a cocoon made of spiderwebs. I took a deep breath, my lungs, for so long dormant and likely atrophied, heaved painfully within my rib cage. My skin recognized the feel of sand before I took full account of my whereabouts. I wiggled my fingers first, sinking them into the soft grains as I forced my body to resume a steady breathing pattern.

I sat up, dragging along with me what appeared to be a shroud of kelp and seaweed - the only thing I had been granted in lieu of covering. My hair fell wildly around my shoulders and all the way down my back, horrifying me. It was a task to separate it from the overhanging kelp. When the devil had I turned into a mermaid? I quickly cast about for my legs, making sure I had not also grown a tail in their place. But no, they were legs. New legs, to be exact. I could tell, though they looked and felt the same, I could always tell when my parts had been replaced by new updates.

How long was I imprisoned in Poseidon’s realm? How much of me did that creature eat? I remembered nothing from my time beneath the sea. Only occasional flashes of giant leathery wings beating frantically over me in my deathlike sleep.

I crawled up onto my hands and knees and vomited into the surf. The water felt cold and tasted salty. The brine was different from my native Aegean and confirmed my suspicion already born out of the gathering fog: I was no longer in Greece.

At last, I rose to my feet, my body becoming attuned to the seeping cold in this foreign air, and I turned towards the rocks. There, sitting on one of the boulders, was a young man, no older than seventeen, with a face that was pleasantly unremarkable and eyes as old as time itself. The youth rose and walked towards me.

“Grigori,” I said, relief washing over me in a cleansing wave.

“Kyrios,” the youth spoke.

How strange it was to hear him speak after so long, but of course, this new vessel would not have lost his tongue. He held a warm blanket out and I wrapped myself in it feeling a barely repressable urge to throw myself into his arms, to feel something take hold of me other than the deep, oceanic void.

“What do I call you?” I asked him in Greek.

“You should call me Grimaud,” he replied in perfect French.

“And who am I?”

“Armand de Sillègue?” the Grigori suggested.

Armand de Sillègue. That name meant very little to me. He had been a Crusader. He had perished. How long ago?

The Grigori, _Grimaud_ (I’d have to get used to that), shifted to stand behind me and moved my overgrown hair out of the way, rubbing heat with his palms into my disused limbs. Life was coming back into my body, but I was afraid to allow my mind to catch up with me.

“Should I cut this?” Grimaud asked, holding my hair in one fist.

Come to think of it, my beard had also evolved into something so lush that I was beginning to resemble the One God of the monotheists. I slowly felt through the coarse hairs with my hands and picked a sea snail out, flicking it into the sand.

“What year is this?” I finally asked, the hair and the beard being implication enough of the fact that I had slept under the sea for a long time.

“1615.”

“What… I…” I had slept for over a century and a half. “Aramis,” I sighed and my knees buckled. I had not exactly swooned, but what little strength I had been able to gather had left me in a blink of an eye and I collapsed into the Grigori’s arms.

“I do not know where he is,” Grimaud said, undaunted in his task of making me presentable again as he dragged my limp body towards the rocks and handed me a flagon of wine, which I did not tarry to press desperately to my lips.

A century and a half lost. I had lost time before, but never so long, and never when it mattered so much. A century and a half without him.

“Is he alive?” I asked, fingers trembling, clutching the blanket like a newborn infant afraid of going unswaddled.

“Master, you must fortify yourself,” he replied, reaching into his gigantic satchel and drawing more things out of it, things no doubt intended for making me feel more human again.

“Is he _alive_?” I repeated, my teeth gnashing against themselves.

“I am your Grigori, Kyrios,” he said switching into our native Greek, the ancient tongue of the gods themselves. “Sent by your Father to watch over and protect you. It is not my task to also locate your long lost lover for you.”

“I liked you better when you did not speak,” I replied.

I suspect had I the strength, I would have hit him for that insolence. He nodded and took out a razor - different from the one I had with me back on Rhodes, but still finely made - and indicated that I should tilt my head back. It took him some time to hack through all the facial hair growth until he could finally play proper barber with my chin. He wore the mask of most acute concentration as I did my best not to cry out and curse the heavens. Where was my Grigori back then, when I was torn asunder under the sea? _Dead._ And Aramis had been the last man to shave me. The memory of that last night I spent with my beloved was tearing me apart, as surely as the sea beast had. I shut my eyes and felt the slide of the razor along my neck and my blood stilled within my veins, feeling betrayed, feeling bereft, that his mouth would not come for it.

Seemingly satisfied with the progress made with my face, Grimaud gestured for me to rise so he could dress me. I obeyed, still reeling from my overlong sleep. He pulled a shirt over my head and then handed me what I could only presume were breeches. The fabric was so fine it may have been silk, with brocade along the side, and also, Zeus help me, ribbons. The shirt had an extravagant lace collar too, now that I was noticing it.

“What… what is all this?”

His gestures were filled with so much impertinence that I saw no point in forbidding him speech.

“What do you mean _clothes_? Men’s clothes?”

“This, my Lord, is what the nobles of Europe are currently wearing. It is the very height of fashion for a gentleman such as yourself.”

“Lace and ribbons?”

“And these,” he handed me a pair of boots with strange elevation platforms attached at the heel.

“What am I supposed to do in those?”

“They say it’s intended for horseback riding, Monsieur. But, in all honesty, I think it’s supposed to make the calf look more appealing.”

I dropped the boots into the sand. “I’m not wearing those! What am I? A Corinthian courtesan?”

“Monsieur, I assure you, you will be sorely out of place if you refuse.”

He handed me a doublet, one that matched the breeches, brocade and all. At least the color had been suitably sombre, a deep burgundy which resonated with the melancholy that had beset my soul.

“A hundred and seventy years,” I said aloud. “No one would wait a hundred and seventy years, Grimaud.”

“You mustn’t despair, my Lord,” he said, and added insolently, “I’d hate to be making a trip back to Greece so soon after you returning from there.”

“That’s it. No more talking,” I stated, grabbing the boots off the sand in some kind of outcry of celestial defiance and pulling them onto my legs. They did fit my calves rather well, I had to admit, but I would need to get used to walking in them.

He need not have feared. I had no intention of dying of a broken heart. Aramis hadn’t left me, after all. It wasn’t his fault that I was eaten by some filthy, oceanic repugnoid! And then trapped in a box under the sea, no doubt for my own protection - I recognized Poseidon’s _modus operandi_ in retrospect - until I regenerated myself.

I hoped he had gotten to safety. That he had found Porthos. Perhaps the two of them… No, I couldn’t think of him out there, somewhere, and perfectly content without me. It was no use, I had no right to him, no claim. I had been gone from his existence for over three times longer than we had ever been together. Let him be alive. Let him be happy.

 _I want you to be happy_.

That’s what I had said to Eris then, before everything went to Hades.

Yes, leave Aramis be. Let him leave a flittermouse-shaped hole inside my soul but leave him be. Leave me in abject misery that I surely brought upon myself.

Grimaud was gesturing something to me that I did not have the wherewithal to comprehend.

“What? Oh, speak, you little gargoyle! But sparingly! I feel a hundred daggers in my _own_ brain right now.”

“Monsieur looks wonderful in this outfit.”

“I appreciate the lengths you go to cheer me, but I look ridiculous. Hand me a knife.”

As if reading my mind, he shook his head and cut my hair off himself, leaving them to the length appropriate in this new time period. Which, in my opinion, was still a little too long.

“Where is my hat?”

A novel monstrosity was presented to me.

“What in the name of Hades!” I exclaimed. It looked as if someone had murdered and plucked an ostrich and mounted it on a felt plate, with a broach. “What kind of… What… Where the devil am I?”

“England, my Lord,” he bowed curtly.

“England?” I grimaced in distaste. “Figures.”

 

***

**England, 1616**

England was dreary and smelled like wet dog and stale ale. My young Monsieur Grimaud, who apparently had a knack for linguistics, conversed with the locals with great ease that I resented to the point of occasionally threatening to remove his tongue myself. This was once I was actually capable of resenting anything, and long after he taught me to walk in those damned high heels. Although I loathed to admit, they did help while I was in the stirrups: a condition in which I found myself constantly as we made our way to Londinium.

I should not call it Londinium. It had come a long way since the time Hadrian, or rather Hadrian’s men, built his wall.

My tongue wasn’t as pliant as Grimaud’s, refusing to turn inside my mouth and make the appropriate sounds. Sometimes I reverted to speaking to him in Russian, my mind rebelling against the novelty of everything that assaulted me.

“What do you mean there are no more bathhouses?”

“That’s right, Kyrios. Putting on a clean shirt is the new bathing.”

“That’s appalling.”

The sword technology, however, had improved drastically since the 15th century. One could appreciate that with an elegant weapon such as the rapier one would have had to upgrade one’s outfit to something suitably graceful (if a bit flouncy). The hilt alone was to marvel at, with the guard which was ingenious, and the grip and pommel that gave me endless pleasure. I could not wait to stab someone with my newest acquisition.

Days, weeks, months passed. Summer turned to fall, leaves fell, then snow, before I knew it I had been in England for a year. In the beginning, the flittermouse-shaped hole inside me hurt all the time. And then it turned into a dull ache, with only moments of acute agony, when I would wake up in the middle of the night from a particularly vivid dream and call out his name. There was never anyone else there to answer me.

What was I doing there? In truth, I knew not. I slept. I learned English and perfected my French - the non-ironic _lingua franca_ of the century. I drank a small sea’s worth of ale, yet never acquired the taste for it. That beverage was suitably purgatorial, like my own existence. Now and then I got into bar brawls, but mostly so that my arms would not forget how to kill, the same way they forgot more and more each day what it meant to hold someone in a lover’s embrace.

Sometimes I resented my heart for not breaking.

And then there were the nights I spent at the Globe, my eyes glued to the stage where words, glorious words would sink deep into my heart and make me deem the English language worth learning.

 _To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,_  
_Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,_  
_To the last syllable of recorded time;_  
_And all our yesterdays have lighted fools_  
_The way to dusty death._

But not for me. My yesterdays and tomorrows were merely a string of black pearls, wrapping endlessly around my neck, and never quite tight enough.

Who was the man who wrote these words? I could pick his plays out easily among others. A certain sense of jocundity in a sea of tragedy. How could a mere mortal grasp something so divine and tether it to his quill? It was a whim, but I was doing nothing better, so I had set out to find him.

The Bard of Avon, they called him, and that’s where I found him. He was living in a semi-retirement, in Stratford upon that eponymous river, to the extent that a poet could ever truly retire. I sat him at a table at his local watering hole and I paid for his ale and then I asked him flat out whether he thought Hamlet was truly the hero of his piece.

That was only the first glass and old Will had insisted his young Dane was the true hero and protagonist of his own tale. I gestured for more ale and pressed him further.

“What makes him the protagonist?” I asked. “He doesn’t actually _do_ anything. He whines a lot.” I drank as he watched me in bewilderment. “He kills Polonius, but it is an accident. He completely destroys an innocent girl’s life. He treats his best friends like crap and they die because of him.”

“But… but… he’s Hamlet!” my Bard insisted, joining me cup for cup. “The entire play is named after him! The whole thing is told from his perspective.”

“He’s a coward and a he’s mad!”

“Or is he only _pretending_ to be mad?”

“In which case, he’s an asshole! If he is pretending to be mad, then he purposefully drove all his loved ones to death. And what for?”

“To avenge his father!”

“Why should I even care about his father? All I know about his good ole Da’ is that he was stupid enough to get poisoned by his own brother, who was also cuckolding him. If anything, Claudius is the true hero of your tale: he’s a doer!”

“What does that make Hamlet?”

“Your villain.” I called for more ale. And also for port. “Let me tell you a story…”

I kept him up all night. At some point, he had started to scribble notes on the tablecloth, mumbling about how he was going to write a magnificent tragedy about me. About us. I offered to illustrate it for him, the way I did Aramis’ folios. Will seemed rather fond of the idea of cock-trees being harvested by nuns.

“You wrote many sonnets to that ‘fair young man’ of yours,” I said through a fog of my own making. “Do you recall any of them?”

“Oh, all of them, I assure you.”

“Tell me the one about death,” I asked, calling for even more port. He was keeping up with me, quite impressively for a mortal, although I could tell he was having a difficult time making his tongue turn. He wasn’t a young man anymore, but then again, neither was I. “You know, the one with the _surly sullen bell_.”

His face animated with the look of drama worthy of one of Aeschylus. He began to recite the sonnet, words flowing over us both like a funereal shroud.

 _No longer mourn for me when I am dead_  
_Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell_  
_Give warning to the world that I am fled_  
_From this vile world with vilest worms to dwell._

Behind him, I could almost see Atropos cutting the golden thread. She could sever his life line, but with his words he had already attained immortality as certainly as I had.

 _Nay, if you read this line, remember not_  
_The hand that writ it; for I love you so,_  
_That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot,_  
_If thinking on me then should make you woe._

When he came to that part, I moaned and let my head drop against the dense wood of the table where we were seated.

“Why?” I asked, my voice sounding pathetically dolorous even to my own ears. “Why should it be like that? Should he forget me in order to be happy?” Will was about to reply, but I interrupted him. “No. Go on. Finish it.”

 _O, if, I say, you look upon this verse,_  
_When I perhaps compounded am with clay,_  
_Do not so much as my poor name rehearse,_  
_But let your love even with my life decay,_  
_Lest the wise world should look into your moan,_  
_And mock you with me after I am gone._

I must have looked especially ridiculous, because Will reached out and gently squeezed my hand and then called for more ale himself. It was a terrible idea. I should have stopped him. I should have known a man should not keep up in dissipation with a demigod, not even a man who had attained immortality in his own right. But I didn’t.

“Do another one,” I demanded and refilled his glass.

He died a few days later and never did get to write his next big tragedy: _Aramis and Athos_. Oh, what a work of art that might have been.

 

***

**London, England, 1617**

I was dreaming again.

I dreamt of his head pillowed next to mine, of his eyelashes fluttering against my lips as I kissed the gentle curve of his cheekbones. I held him close, my hand feverishly digging into the corded muscles of his back, and I told him I loved him. He opened his eyes and asked me if I was scared, like he did that night when we were last together, only this time the dam in my eyes burst and I wept. I tried to stop myself, but my tears turned into an ocean and drowned me, and all that was left of his image were those giant leathery wings of a bat, fluttering over me in my watery grave.

I awoke screaming and drenched in a cold sweat.

In those days, I often thought of Porthos. Mostly because of how much he would hate it in the British Isles. What was he doing, I wondered? Would he have ever left the sun-drenched home of our gods and did his smile still beam eternal as the Sun itself? I think he would have rather enjoyed some of Shakespeare’s comedies.

Porthos had been an excellent practice partner. But such as it was, I had to content myself with strangers in fencing salons. It did not take long for me to master the new art of fencing. I appreciated the elegant, deadly dance of it. My body had taken on an elasticity that it had not had since the early days of my youth. Death as seduction, I thought, and my mind flew to him again on willful wings. I imagined Aramis with a rapier in hand and my blood boiled. Would I never be free of the Wallachian devil?

I went into a church that night. For all their talk of separating from the Papists, the House of God felt remarkably similar to the Catholic churches I have seen over the centuries. It gave me comfort to see that some things changed slower than others.

I walked along the aisle, in my mind reliving each step I took in Snagov, across the transept, and to the very end of the apse, stopping before the main altar. Above it rose a simple marble crucifix, from which Jesus cast his accusatory looks upon me.

“Don’t look at me like that,” I said. “I took far better care of him than you ever did.”

Had I regretted one thing, it was that I did not know back then that I could have faced Jesus as a son of God, as an equal. Well, almost as an equal. He wore his mortal coil much more convincingly than I did, I suppose.

“What’s your take on blood-drinking two-souled Slavic demons?” I asked. “I bet he’s more fond of you than you are of him.” As far as divinities went, this one third of the Trinity was not a big talker. “You bore me,” I snapped and knocked over the candlesticks.

Surprising to no one, I ended up in an alehouse. Try as I might, I could no more drink myself into true oblivion than I could cause my heart to burst. It beat like a steady war drum inside my chest, as if the watery sleep across nearly two centuries meant nothing to it. I knew it was because Aramis had loved me. No matter how much it hurt to have been torn away from him, that fixed universal point was not one I could alter. He had loved me. It had been real.

“Well, you look like you’re having an even shittier day than I am,” someone declared and plopped uninvited upon my bench. He had spoken in French, which was the only reason I had not immediately stabbed him in the face with my misericorde. Another thing about England that galled me - the English. This new arrival was extremely drunk but possibly entertaining.

“It’s been longer than just one shitty day,” I replied in my new guest’s tongue.

“Would you describe it as shit stew then, Monsieur?”

“A maelstrom of shit, Monsieur.”

He laughed and tossed his hair back as he did so. Upon closer inspection, I noted that whilst drunk and rather rude, the stranger was also young and handsome. In fact, ostensibly we passed for roughly each other’s age and built, and he shared my pale complexion and dark features.

“Forgive me, Monsieur,” he said, suddenly remembering his manners, “for encroaching upon your solitude. But you looked like a man of discerning tastes and I could not allow you to drink this English swill alone.”

“That was bold of you to assume I was not English myself, Monsieur…?”

“Olivier, le comte de La Fère,” he introduced himself with a flourish.

“Armand de Sillègue,” I replied with the briefest of nods.

“Excellent! A Gascon?”

He knew where Sillègue was located, this one. I had to be more careful with him. I was far too drunk for this level of dissembling.

“I have not set foot in Gascony in some time,” I replied carefully. Some time, of course, being all the time in the world for I had never set foot in Gascony. “And what brings you to London, M. le comte?”

“Ah,” he brought his own cup to his lips and seemed to struggle through a wave of disgust to swallow it. “Damn it, is there no wine anywhere in this accursed place?”

“My valet has a stash that he procured for me, but I would not see fit to invite a count to my lodgings.”

“You have access to ambrosia, and yet I find you here, soaking up this swill?”

His mentioning of ambrosia piqued me. He did not deserve my wine. “You were going to say what brought you to London,” I redirected.

“That’s right,” he drank again and grimaced. “A woman.”

“Love?”

“Vengeance!”

“Hm,” I could have told him a thing or two about vengeance. What was it that the sages say? To dig two graves, I believe.

“I like you, Armand de Sillègue,” he suddenly clapped me upon my shoulder. “And as it turns out, I have some time to kill here in London. What say you help me murder it?”

I looked him up and down. I weighed my options. “Oh, what the hell,” I muttered. “Come along, count, I will share my wine with you.”

***

Through the filter of wine, comte de La Fère’s face came into a sharp focus. He sat with his head propped upon his elbow, his posture in perfect mirror of my own. He looked at me as if I had the same hypnotic power that Aramis appeared to have over his victims.

“You seem sad,” he muttered, his tongue heavy with intoxication. “I mean truly _sad_. Like, you don’t even know where to put your sadness.”

“I lost someone very dear to me,” I replied, my free hand absentmindedly twirling the empty bottle of wine.

“Me too,” he said, reaching for his glass. “Only, not so much lost, exactly. I know where she is. She’s here, in London.”

“That’s right - your vengeance.” In truth, I was not very concerned about comte de La Fère and whether he had misplaced his flighty lovenugget.

“I should have killed her myself,” he spoke into his glass. “You can’t trust anyone these days, you know. Wives, servants, headsmen.”

My eyes, which had closed as he droned on, opened slightly. “All right. I’ll bite. Tell me your story of great woe.”

He was too drunk to sense that I had been mocking him.

Stop me if this sounds familiar. A young count falls in love with a beautiful girl, with the face of an angel and an ardent mind, not of a woman, but of a poet. He courts her, and in what he surely perceives to be a great act of good breeding, he marries her rather than carrying her off like my Olympian father may have done.

“What a spectacular ass I was!” comte de La Fère exclaimed.

“Because you did not take her by force?” I asked.

“I would have been perfectly within my rights to do so,” he said. I narrowed my eyes in disgust.

“Of course. Because she was a woman, and you were Lord of the land.”

Humanity was repugnant to me. Perhaps in Hera’s curse there had been a glimmer of redemption: since I could not pursue women as sexual objects, I had developed the audacious habit of thinking of them as people.

But he did marry her, you see, and was rather pleased to observe her cutting such a fine figure as the countess de La Fère. I believe you are familiar with the rest of this story, too. It’s all quite dramatic, really. The hunt, the rearing horse, the fallen Madame la comtesse in distress. The count, eager to come to his young wife’s aid rends her corset with his poniard. The dress falls to reveal - a dramatic pause - the brand of the fleur de lys.

“Had you never before taken her with the lights on?” I asked.

“I took her modesty for a caprice,” he fumed. “I was a fool. Love makes fools of all of us.”

I thought of Aramis. Had love made a fool of me? Had I done something _out of love_ that I regretted? It was my sister Discord who had betrayed me, not him, not my angel.

“The angel had turned out to be a demon in disguise!” the count persevered in the telling of his horrific tale.

“What did you do?”

“The only thing I could do. I handed her over to my grooms to hang her from the highest tree in my forest!”

“You… you _murdered_ her?” I could not believe my ears.

“What else could I have done? My honor, my family name besmirched. Tainted by this demon in disguise!”

“You did not give her the chance to explain? To defend herself?”

“Defend herself? A branded thief?”

I closed my eyes again. He had loved her. She was his True Love, he had said, his One True Love. And he slaughtered her like a beast, upon the first suspicion. Whereas I had taken my demon lover into my heart, based on nothing but instinct alone.

“May your God rest her soul,” I whispered, feeling bile rise up in my gullet. _May he have mercy on yours_ , I thought.

“Oh, but she’s not dead,” he informed me. “No, no. No sooner was my back turned than the vile seductress had managed to bedevil one of the grooms and he had saved her miserable life.”

“Never let a servant do the master’s work,” I squeezed through my teeth, secretly jubilating on behalf of the Madame de La Fère.

Would I have hanged Aramis from a tree? I wondered. Between love and hate there is a very thin, barely perceptible line. His wife - his Anne - had shaken his faith in her love, even though he never said so. Perhaps he was not cognizant of it himself, but I was. Would I have killed Aramis for doing the same to me? But no, I knew I wouldn’t have. I would have first cut down every tree in that forest rather than even give anyone the idea.

“He confessed later to being complicit in her escape. I had followed her trail and it led me here. Guess what this witch is about to do?”

“Sacrifice Christian babies to Satan?” I asked, my mockery again falling on drunk ears.

“Better! She’s bewitched another nobleman. A baron of some kind. Lord Winter.”

“She wasted no time, your Anne de Breuil.” I had to admire such determination, such survivalism.

“Indeed. And that is why I’m here. To warn de Winter off the harlot and ruin her matrimonial plans.”

“You’re perfectly within your rights to do so,” I shrugged.

“But he is away with his brother somewhere right now.” His lips appeared to fail him, turning his speech into a slur. A hiccup escaped his chest. “I’m told he’s expected back in five days.”

“And have you seen your wife?”

It looked as if he was barely being kept upright by a supernatural force. His eyes became entirely unfocused. I got up from the chair and the speed with which I rose must have been the finishing blow to his faltering psyche and he passed out at my table. I left him there for the remainder of the night and took myself to bed.

***

The following morning I escorted my guest back to the inn where he was lodged. I might not have exactly been enamoured, but honor compelled me to at least see to his safety after the amount of imbibing achieved _chez moi_ the night before.

His valet seemed grateful for his master’s return and offered me breakfast, which I did not see fit to refuse. In the light of morning, I was finding comte de La Fère transformed into what I presumed was his public visage. He was perfectly charming and polite and did not even once mention attempting to murder any helpless females. I began to question whether I had not dreamed up the conversation of the prior night myself.

Trying to keep myself entertained, I scanned his lodgings and my eyes alighted upon a magnificent sword of rare workmanship. The jewel-encrusted hilt alone was worth a fortune. The count had caught the direction of my sight.

“Ah, you’ve discovered the family heirloom.” He got up and took the beautiful instrument out of the sheath, handing it to me with reverence. “It had been a gift to my father from Francis I, for my father had given his own sword to the King in battle.”

“A glorious story for such a glorious blade,” I replied, admiring the workmanship up close.

“I belong to one of the oldest noble families in France,” comte de La Fère pronounced, pride emanating off him in radiant waves. Here, I thought, was a man who was as proud of his progenitors as I was of mine, so we had that in common, at least.

And then I remembered. _Moi, Raymond de La Fère, 21 ans, reconnais que j'ai craché trois fois sur la Croix, mais de bouche et pas de cœur._ The poor Templar boy whose confession had been torn out of him and preserved for all posterity. That must have been why his name had sounded so familiar to me.

Unbidden, my thoughts flew again to Aramis and a cloud must have passed over my features. I quickly handed the sword back to the count and turned towards the window, to hide my turmoil.

“What will you do when you’ve finished your business here, count?” I enquired.

“Well, I cannot very well go back to La Fère,” he muttered, his face coloring in confusion. “But,” he cheered up significantly all of a sudden, “I’ve just heard from my great-uncle on my mother’s side, in Blois. The old man is childless and it would appear I’m his only relation, for he writes how delighted he would be to make my acquaintance before he moves on.” He made a flippant, little skyward gesture. “I thought I might go there and see if we can get more familial.”

Here, I thought, was a man who cared very little for anyone. It would be better for his great-uncle to never meet him and fall for his blatant opportunism.

“You have no other family then?” I asked.

“I am my father’s only living son,” he shrugged. “It appears I am the last scion of that great de La Fère dynasty.”

“Perhaps you will enjoy meeting this… great-uncle then?”

“You mean the old viscount de Bragelonne? Not likely. I never heard very much worth hearing about my mother’s side of the family.”

My lip curled upwards in disgust. The scoundrel disrespected his entire maternal line and the gods did not see fit to cast him down into Tartarus?

“What about yourself? You never did tell me the source of your great grief.” He was at my side suddenly, and his presence felt oppressive.

“No, I never did.”

“Well, I told you mine.”

“That was your choice.”

“Oh, come now, _mon ami_! After last night, we’re practically brothers, you and I.” Again I wondered at his audacity. He was nothing like my brothers! “Of course,” he broke out into a fit of laughter, “I’d be the legitimate son and you’d be the bastard.”

Then again, I thought, as I turned to him slowly, perhaps the gods did see fit to cast him into Tartarus - and by my own hand. For was I not, and have I not always been, their instrument?

“M. le comte,” I said, imbuing my voice with an icy chill, “I hope that this magnificent sword is not merely decorative. I expect that you are adept at using it, because I would now like you to follow me.”

“Where?”

“Where ever it would not inconvenience you to die this morning.”

I had not struck him with my glove, as was the custom of the day, but his face went as ashen as if I did.

“I am at your service, M. de Sillègue.”

The count and I were followed by our valets down to the docks where I had the honor, nay, the keen pleasure of engaging him. Our swords crossed swiftly. He was a skilled opponent, I could admire his technique at least. He should have been grateful to me, really, for I was giving him a chance to die honorably, with sword in hand. Which was more than what could be said of what he had planned for this lady love of his.

At last, I feinted and lunged, my blade piercing him right in the heart. He fell at my feet, his eyes open and staring up at the murky English sky. I blinked down at the last scion of the great de La Fère dynasty and then I raised my head towards Grimaud. Our eyes met and, as always, I had the feeling that he knew what I needed more than I did.

In the blink of an eye, my familiar was at the count’s valet’s side, stabbing him to death.

“What are you doing?” I hissed, horrified.

“Witness,” Grimaud shrugged and wiped the blood off the blade of his poniard.

“Witness? This was a duel!”

“Yes, and a very sad one too. My master was killed.” My bizarre guardian angel had begun to go through the count’s person, removing his signet ring, his sword, and whatever papers he had on him.

“Your master? Have you lost your mind, Grigori?”

“Armand de Sillègue,” he said.

“Grimaud, _I_ am Armand de Sillègue.”

He rose and handed the signet ring and sword to me. “Not anymore.”

“This is madness,” I shook my head.

“No one will look for the killer of Armand de Sillègue, Kyrios. On the other hand, if the comte de La Fère is found run through with a sword in London, that might make waves for you.”

I had never taken the identity of anyone I had killed before. It simply wasn’t how I operated. But the Grigori had a point. And the alibi was perfect. The count had no family yet his family name could open many doors. As far as I could tell, no one even knew where he was. And, in a stroke of surely divine luck, we actually did look somewhat alike. His bastard brother, indeed.

“Come, M. le comte,” Grimaud beckoned me. “Let us return to the inn to collect the rest of your luggage.”

“And then?”

“Where ever you’d like to go, M. le comte.”

“Blois? I hear I have a delightful great-uncle there, who’s never met me.”

“Very good, M. le comte.”

Whatever documents I had on me, I planted on comte de La Fère’s person. And then, in a final gesture of contrition, I crossed his arms over his chest and closed his eyes.

For a moment, I thought about this woman he had come here to ruin. She was a widow now. Free to marry whomever she liked. And, more importantly, it wasn’t my business. With a last look at the remains of Olivier de La Fère, I followed my Grigori down my next path. The path that inevitably led me to France.

 


End file.
